Detroit, Michigan (CNN) -- The knock came for Pat Szpunar one afternoon in September 2012. At her door on a quiet corner in Roseville, a northeast suburb of Detroit, stood two local police detectives.
After some chitchat, she was hit with this doozy: They suspected a body was buried in her backyard.
Szpunar, a 74-year-old widow who has lived in the house since 1988, couldn't help but laugh.
"What?" she asked. "You think Jimmy Hoffa's buried back there?"
The detectives looked stunned but wouldn't say who they were looking for. She was only joking, but then a local reporter who'd caught wind of the investigation showed up. He wanted to talk about the former Teamsters boss who, he heard, was underneath her property.
Soon, Szpunar says, all hell broke loose, turning her place "not into a three-ring circus" but "a five-ring circus."

On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time, MTV launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by John Lack, and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia, which took place earlier that year, and of the launch of Apollo 11. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV theme song, a crunching rock tune composed by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over photos of the Apollo 11 moon landing, with the flag featuring MTV's logo changing various colors, textures, and designs. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a conceit. Seibert said they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quote, but lawyers said Armstrong owns his name and likeness, and Armstrong had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound.

The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". This was followed by the video for Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Sporadically, the screen would go black when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR. MTV's lower third graphics that appear near the beginning and end of music videos would eventually use the recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years, but these graphics differed on MTV's first day of broadcast; they were set in a different typeface and included record label information such as the year and label name.

The Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916, in Jersey City, New Jersey, was an act of sabotage by German agents to destroy American-made munitions that were to be supplied to the Allies in World War I.

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After midnight on July 30, a series of small fires was discovered on the pier. Some guards fled, fearing an explosion. Others attempted to fight the fires and eventually called the Jersey City Fire Department.

At 2:08 AM, the first and largest of the explosions took place. Fragments from the explosion traveled long distances, some lodging in the Statue of Liberty and some in the clock tower of The Jersey Journal building in Journal Square, over a mile away, stopping the clock at 2:12 a.m. The explosion was the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale and was felt as far away as Philadelphia. Windows broke as far as 25 miles (40 km) away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were completely shattered. The stained glass windows in St. Patrick's Church were destroyed. The outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall was cracked and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. People as far away as Maryland were awakened by what they thought was an earthquake.

Property damage from the attack was estimated at $20 million. The damage to the Statue of Liberty was estimated to be $100,000 and included the skirt and torch.

Immigrants being processed at Ellis Island had to be evacuated to lower Manhattan. Reports vary, but as many as seven people may have been killed, including:

a Jersey City policeman
a Lehigh Valley Railroad Chief Of Police
a ten week old infant
a barge captain

Injuries numbered in the hundreds. Smaller explosions continued to occur for hours after the initial blast.

Well, here is a clever new business strategy: Offer service members around the country and around the world financing for their appliances, furniture, and electronics, and then, when they fall behind on their loans, sue them in courts they can't get to to represent themselves.

Turns out: effective! Also: legal.

These are the conclusions of a new report jointly published by ProPublica and The Washington Post that looks at the financial "innovation" of USA Discounters and two other companies, Freedom Furniture and Electronics and Military Credit Services, that sell goods to service members on credit and then, if they fall behind, go after them in Virginia courts, regardless of where the service members are based. Together the three companies have filed 35,000 lawsuits in a little under a decade.

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For service members who don't appear in Virginia, a lawyer is appointed on their behalf. "But," Kiel writes, "the law does not specify what that lawyer must do." ProPublica found that in each of the 11 cases it examined, the same lawyer was selected as the defendant's representative, and he seems to have made minimal efforts on his clients' behalf. USA Discounters denied any "business relationship" with the attorney.

That USA Discounters' strategy lines up so perfectly with the SCRA loophole is, presumably, no accident. As John Odom, whom Kiel identifies as an expert on the SCRA, observes, "This looks like somebody who has really, really researched the best way to get around the entire intent of the SCRA."

I've got a mule, her name is Sal
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay
And every inch of the way I (we) know
From Albany to Buffalo

Chorus:
Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge cause we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal
Get up there Sal, we've passed that lock,
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
And we'll make Rome before six o'clock
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
One more trip and back we'll go
Through the rain and sleet and snow
And every inch of the way I (we) know
From Albany to Buffalo
Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

GENOA, Italy, July 27 (Reuters) - The wrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner limped into its last port on Sunday, when it was towed to the northern Italian city of Genoa to be broken up for scrap, two-and-a-half years after running aground and sinking with the loss of 32 lives.

After a four-day journey from the Tuscan island of Giglio, where it sank on Jan. 13, 2012, the 114,500-tonne hulk was manoeuvered into place and secured at the conclusion of one of the largest and most complex maritime salvages ever attempted.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi flew to Genoa to hail the completion of the operation which restored some pride to Italy after a disaster that was widely interpreted as a national humiliation as well as a human tragedy.

"This isn't a day for showing off or creating a spectacle, but it's a mark of gratitude from the prime minister for getting something done which everyone said would be impossible," Renzi told reporters on the dock, saluting the work of the salvage engineers from Italy and around the world.